Abstract
Climate change, combined with industrial growth and increasing demand, could result in serious future water shortages and related water quality and temperature issues, especially for upland and humid areas. The extreme 2018 drought that prevailed throughout Europe provided an opportunity to investigate conditions likely to become more frequent in the future. For an upland rural catchment utilised by the distilling industry in North‐East Scotland, a tracer‐based survey combined discharge, electrical conductivity, stable water isotopes and temperature measurements to understand the impacts of drought on dominant stream water and industry water sources, both in terms of water quantity and quality (temperature). Results showed that water types (groundwater, ephemeral stream water, perennial stream water and water from small dams) were spatially distinct and varied more in space than time. With regards to the drought conditions we found that streams were largely maintained by groundwater during low flows. This also buffered stream water temperatures. Water types with high young water fractions were less resilient, resulting in streams with an ephemeral nature. Although our results demonstrated the importance of groundwater for drought resilience, water balance data revealed these storage reserves were being depleted and only recovered towards the end of the following year because of above average rainfall in 2019. Increased storage depletion under continued trends of extreme drought and water abstraction could be addressed via informed (nature based) management strategies which focus on increasing recharge. This may improve resilience to droughts as well as floods, but site specific testing and modelling are required to understand their potential. Results could have implications for management of water volumes and temperature, particularly for the sustainability of an historic industry, balancing requirements of rural communities and the environment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4190-4210 |
| Number of pages | 21 |
| Journal | Hydrological Processes |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 22 |
| Early online date | 12 Aug 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Oct 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to acknowledge financial support from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (project NE/P010334/1) via a CASE industrial studentship with Chivas Brothers. David Drummond, Katya Dimitrova-Petrova and Eva Loerke are thanked for assistance with fieldwork, while we acknowledge Dr Aaron Neill for his advice on young water fraction analyses. Trevor Buckley and staff at the Glenlivet Distillery are thanked for on-site assistance and supply of data and abstraction records. We thank Audrey Innes, Dr Bernhard Scheliga, and Dr Ilse Kamerling for their support with the laboratory isotope analysis.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Hydrological Processes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
Keywords
- climate change
- drought
- enviromental tracers
- groundwater-resilence
- water resources
- management
- temperature
- BELFORD CATCHMENT
- water resources management
- CLIMATE-CHANGE
- CHANGE IMPACTS
- SURFACE-WATER
- GROUNDWATER RECHARGE
- HYDROGRAPH SEPARATION
- STABLE-ISOTOPES
- MEAN TRANSIT TIMES
- groundwater-resilience
- ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS
- HYDROLOGICAL PATHWAYS
- environmental tracers
Access to Document
- Fennel_etal_hyp_Lessons_VOR
© 2020 The Authors. Hydrological Processes published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/